Pimp My Filter #6 - Juwel Bioflow Internal Filter (all models)

Hello there, welcome back. In this video we're going to be taking at another filter that I would probably class as a bit of a heavy hitter. This one is a dual filter. Dual filter, bioflow filter, medium. Now this is the filter that would ordinarily be siliconed into place in the corner of a dual tank. This one's a bit of a strange one because it relies almost entirely on foams. Even though it's a really big, nice filter with plenty of room for filter media. And although the back of the box does show two cartridges of filter media, here and here, that's described as being optional. I would actually like to see that come with the filter instead of just foams. So that explains why when I unpacked this there was huge gaps in this filter. Let's take a look inside and I'll show you how it works. Okay. Our pump's in the top, that's our outlet that goes back to the tank. So ordinarily that would be in the side of the tank and this actually draws water in from the bottom and the top. So we've got slits in here which are a decent size and slits in here and that'll be sitting in the corner so you're drawn from the corner at the bottom but it also has a lot of slits in the top as well. So water obviously goes through there, drops straight down onto these pads here but where it comes in the bottom It actually flows up this chamber and it comes out here and here onto our foams. So ultimately all the water that's drawn into this thing hits our foams from the top. Now this is how it comes set up from the manufacturer and you can see the problem here. It tips straight onto a fine pad which is just going to get clogged very, very quickly and need replacing. This filter's got quite a handy way of getting all these foams out. They sit in like a little cage. Now bear in mind you would take these out of the plastic wrappers, but the water hits that first, so it goes through the fine pad first, then it goes through a carbon impregnated foam, then it goes through a nitrate reducing foam, then it goes through a coarse foam. So we'll just lay that out there, so you can remember the order of that. It then has a huge gap where a cartridge of filter media is meant to sit and then it just goes through two ordinary coarse foams. From there it's drawn in two places, one right at the bottom and one halfway up into the pump and back out to the tank. I haven't picked a very good colour t-shirt for this demonstration, I'll try and hold that to the side. Okay, so that's how we're set up at the moment. From top to bottom. Fine pad, carbon foam, Nitrate reducing foam, coarse pad, and another two coarse pads. Those coarse pads are slightly less coarse than this one. It's set up all cockeyed. I can see why they do it, and there's a few companies do this for a specific reason. If water hits the fine pad first, this can get clogged up in a matter of days. So it needs constantly replacing. And that means you've got to go back to a shop and most people buy the proper dual pad. I know when I had a shop I was saying to people look we've got these big pads you can cut dozens of these little pads out of it and they wouldn't have it. They would buy something in a box with three or four little pads in that cost a fortune and I could never ever see why they were doing that. I was saying look move that further down and I want it on the top. It's got to be on the top that's how it comes you know. Catches all the muck. I'll show you how it should be set up. You'll have noticed there that that pad on the top is actually three pads, three little pads. Really, that's about as thick as you need for your fine pad. Okay, remember how it comes set up from the manufacturer, and I'll show you how it should be set up. We're going to work on the bottom cartridge first. This one is going to be totally filled with biological media, and that biological media is going to be bio-gravel in little mesh bags. Stacked on top of each other, like that. Now because of the limited space that we've got in this particular filter, for good biological media, we're going with a biogravel. If we had a little bit more space, we would go with something bigger, like the BioHome Ultimate or Mini Ultra. But in this case, we wanna try and get maximum surface area into a minimum space, so that's why we're going with that. Ooh, I might get four on, and four. Push that right down to the bottom. That's our biological side done. I've weighed that media and it's 1.2 kilos. That is about three pound in weight. And that's not bad because really that's all we've got to work with. This one is mostly gonna be foams. Right, now we're gonna concentrate on the top cartridge. So in an ideal world, we want the water to hit coarse, medium, and then fine. So let's see how much room that takes up. We're just going to reuse the foams that actually come with this, because they're good quality foams. So, in the top, coarse. Be classed as medium, I suppose, that one. Medium. Really, we just need one of those fine pads. Fine. Okay, that is going to give us room for another bag of media. Right. I think there's going to be enough room to get the carbon as well. Now ordinarily the carbon would be the very last thing that the water hits. But I don't want it in the very bottom in case there's muck collecting in the bottom of there. So I think we'll go a coarse, medium, fine, carbon, media and then more media. Okay, so we've got our bag of media in there. On top of that, our carbon impregnated sponge. Just like so. Fine pad. Medium sponge. It doesn't really need to be as thick as that, but we may as well use it. Coarse sponge. That goes in there really, really nicely. I'll bring the camera and we'll have a look down inside this filter now. Water's going to be coming in here, and also it's going to be coming up this section, where the heater would normally be, and pouring out into here as well. Therefore, all of our water is going to be pouring in to the coarse foam first. It's then going to go through the medium foam. Through a fine pad, through a carbon impregnated pad, and then it hits our media. In the bottom cartridge, it hits four more bags of media. There we go. Awesome. Okay, I'm just going to put that bubble wrap in there just for transport purposes because this has to go back to its owner, who's a guy called Adam. Okay, so that's how to set up a dual internal filter. This particular one holds 1.5 kilos of filter media, so that should see a full cycle. That is zero ammonia zero nitrite and also very very low nitrates full cycle in a normally stocked community tank up to about 150 liters. This particular filter comes in tanks which are about 180 liters and if you factor into the equation the fact that it's never full all the way up you've got sand or gravel as a substrate you've got rocks and bog wood and all that you're probably looking at 150 160 liters all told so that's about the right size and now it's set up right to work properly now we did use a lot of the parts that actually came with this filter but we do have some left over we've got one of the thick medium to coarse pads we've got the nitrate reduction pad because after selling these for about 20 odd years or something when I had a shop. These just didn't work at all so that's pointless. If you need another medium density pad just use one of them. They're basically just pads to act as a mechanical filter surplus to requirements and we've got two spare fine pads. The fine pad would just be replaced as and when it became dirty, and now because we've got the water hitting the coarse sponge, then the medium sponge, then the fine pad, this fine pad should last a hell of a lot longer than it would if it was on the top of the filter taking all the heavy muck. So there you go, that one is pimped up, ready to go back, and if you've got a filter that you'd like me to take a look at and feature in this Pimp Your Filter video series, then Then by all means, just... Either email me or phone me up. I'll put my details in the video description and also in the pinned comment along with any useful links. Don't send me a YouTube message or put what you have and what you want to send me in a comment because the chances are I might miss it. I get so many comments that not all of them come through as email notifications so I sometimes miss comments. So if you've asked a question in a comment and it hasn't been answered for about a week, it means I've probably missed it. And if you've sent a message via the YouTube messaging service, they never come through as emails for some reason. Although I've got it set to be notified of every interaction that I get on the channel, I think it's because I get so many, not all of them are sent through. Otherwise I would get about 200 a day or something mad like that, you know? So my details are in the video description. Only people in the UK send me stuff because I don't want to be sending heavy items back out to the US or to Australia or really anywhere beyond the UK just because of the shipping costs. It does cost a lot. In the UK I can send this pack next day delivery for about 7 or 8 quid so it doesn't cost me much. I'm happy to do that to see your filter set up properly and also to make a video on it as well because it will hopefully help a lot of people. And if you want to help me help a lot of people, please give it the thumbs up and share this video wherever you want. Thanks for watching. See you next time. You better now, man. Yeah. You better? Feel alright, huh?